WESTBARD INDUSTRIAL
ZONE POLLUTION
REVEALED?
USA Today Investigation Reveals High
Levels of Pollution and Carcinogens at All Schools
Near Westbard Industrial Zone; Raises New
Questions about WWI Munitions Recovery Operations
My discovery last year of brownfields in the Westbard industrial zone, and concerns about pollutants there, have been vindicated by a new USA Today report.
This week, USA Today is publishing a series (also online at http://smokestack.usatoday.com) on air pollution near schools. Strangely, all of the schools in the vicinity of the Westbard zone rated highly for pollutants.
(Westland MS, Westbrook ES, Washington Waldorf School, Washington Episcopal School, Little Flower School, Abingdon Montessori School, Holden Montessori Day School, Wood Acres ES).
They are the only "grey"-colored schools on the list in Bethesda!
Is this just a coincidence?
I believe this again shows the need for comprehensive environmental testing of the entire industrial zone. The USA Today report details a variety of chemicals present. In the print edition only, it names benzene as a carcinogen present at Westbrook ES. This is found in cleaning chemicals, and other cleaning chemicals were present at the former chemical lab site brownfield. Importantly, there is an American Chemical Co. building (which has not even been investigated yet) and numerous other potentially-polluting businesses in the zone. Hydrochloric acid is found in oil-related industry, and the MTBE brownfield was a former fuel transfer station. Not to mention the many auto-related businesses in there. (Manganese = car batteries?)
So where are these chemicals coming from?:
1. The Westbard industrial zone is a likely source, but no one other than myself is currently onto this possibility.
2. The USA Today report fingers only one local source, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers site at Dalecarlia. This raises new questions. Against nearby residents' wishes, a towering pile of dredged sediment is being compiled near Sibley Hospital. But there is more going on there than the Corps is telling us, and I suspect the buried munitions are more widespread than thought.
3. The levels of chlorine and sulfuric acid found by USA Today are consistent with World War I gas munitions.
4. Of course, we are within range of the Alexandria and Dickerson power plants. Hence the carbonyl sulfide.
In summary, I believe residents have a right to know what we are being exposed to from the Westbard zone, and the Dalecarlia operations.
Unfortunately, the USA Today reporters were unaware of the information I discovered about the industrial zone, or the full nature of the Dalecarlia operations.
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